Chicago artist Freidrich$ brings drill, acoustic songwriting and outsider hip-hop together on I Am the Prince of Darkness, a new album that is considerably more playful than its title suggests.
Freidrich$ has developed an idiosyncratic approach to hip-hop that combines the genre’s language and rhythms with the intimacy and melodic sensibility of indie and twee music. On I Am the Prince of Darkness, those influences collide across songs about relationships, trapping, going on licks and fades, hanging around the projects and trying to find a place within worlds that the artist often observes from slightly outside.
The album moves freely between styles. “Enchantment” approaches Chicago drill through Freidrich$’s deliberately eccentric musical language, while “Shimmy Yay” interpolates Ol’ Dirty Bastard and draws on an older, stranger tradition of New York hip-hop. “Yours” moves in the opposite direction, reducing the music to an acoustic love song, while “Never Get Old” looks back on time spent hanging around the projects with a mixture of affection and distance.
That tension between belonging and outsideness runs throughout the album. Freidrich$ draws seriously from street rap without attempting to erase the contradictions between that music and his own persona. Tough talk can sit next to vulnerability, acoustic guitars beside drill drums, and references to street life beside an artist performing in black-metal corpse paint.
The result is something like a twee interpretation of hip-hop: rough, funny, melodic and unexpectedly tender. Rather than settling into a single rap subgenre, I Am the Prince of Darkness treats hip-hop as a world broad enough to contain all of those contradictions at once.
Jose Zamora is a writer and creator from Boston, MA. He has been a music nerd since middle school when he started his record collection. His passion for Hip-hop began when he discovered legends like Nas and Gang Starr and became obsessed with up-and-coming acts like Kendrick Lamar and A$AP Mob.
He is a recently graduated, up-coming journalist, passionate about music and culture. He is always keeping an eye out for the next big thing and is eager to put their talent in the spotlight for others to enjoy. He believes firmly that “Good art deserves to be talked about.”
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